


A Study in Scarlet

by beatofmywings



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Except in a not alive kind of way, I’m really sorry about this, John is too, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock is sad, Sort Of, dont read if you don’t want to cry, moriarty isn’t nice, spoiler there’s death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 11:15:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13006626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beatofmywings/pseuds/beatofmywings
Summary: The heart is never safe, not even for a high-functioning sociopath.





	A Study in Scarlet

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Character death, descriptions of blood and mutilation, mention of drugs
> 
> I don’t condone the use of drugs or obviously mutilating/killing people, it was only written for the sake of a good plot but please if any of this affects you don’t read, stay safe everyone <3

All that was left of the blood that once flowed thick and warm in his veins was now splattered over his calloused fingers, once desperately trying to seal the wound but now drawn low in defeat. Scarlet tinted his vision, his clothes, the floor, the cold skin, the lifeless eyes, the fallen soldier. Patches of brown were permanently stained into his newly bought jumper, removable but never in the mind that twisted and writhed in the agony no man nor woman could contain.

Many described death as peaceful, a passing from one end to another beginning, a life cycle that can't be stopped or controlled or even predicted, however those who knew different walked with the weight on their shoulders that they were different. They knew what others refused to accept. Death wasn't peaceful, not for those whose life was stolen in a fallen heartbeat, crushed by the power of time combined with nature. Death stole from the virtuous and the poor, the guilty and the saviours. It didn't care what it left behind as long as the deed was done and the life that once shone radiantly with health and fortune was lost. 

John was a soldier. A soldier who fought for the freedom of his country and his name, fought for their sons and daughters who he would never meet but never had to. He risked his own health and fortune for the idea of a what if, the idea of a better life for the blank faces that opened him doors or carried his shopping when his shoulder failed him. Sherlock was usually the blank face, but not in the way others were. Emotions were a weakness, hope was for the hopeless and sentimentality was a gun to his head, but John was the bullet. John was warm hands and soft voices and lights twinkling in the sky at night, eruptions of gold and silver on a diamond plate or leaves crinkling beneath your feet. He was everything that ever was and nothing at all at the same time. 

Sherlock was nothing now, not that he was ever a something to begin with. John made him something, made him the man Mother's scolded their children to be and hopeless souls ran to for help. A man with a brain which would cure the universe but could not cure himself, no matter how many drugs he pumped into his veins or how many times he shut out the world. The drugs didn't make him numb, they made him more aware of his own mentality and overall weakness in the grand scheme of his existence, but he longed for them now to just shut out the real world for just one moment. 

John was the world and all that was in it. But no more.

To Sherlock blood was no more interesting than any other experiment or mess that needed cleaning. It speckled on his dressing gown when his petri dish came to life, it dusted his sterile gloved fingertips when his cases did not. Every time he was in it's presence he neither noticed nor cared for its smell, it was so ubiquitous and to him no more significant than the smell of the car fumes down the hectic streets or the undertone of tea that was ever-present. However this time was different, the metallic scent was in his mouth and on his clothes and polluting his mind, it was not where it should be and far from doing its job. 

Instead it seeped through the cracks of the pavement and lined the patterns of his hands, like a scarlet map pointing him towards the unavoidable scene lay before him. Broken skin, shattered bones, open and exposed for any prying eyes or looting hands to explore. A mouth still frozen in fear, eyes glassy with what once would have been tears, hands lay bruised and bent on the cobble from countless acts of defiance and useless self defence, a last stand against what was now the inevitable. Time seemed frozen yet it never truly was, despite being only a concept it still seemed to tease with its nonexistent fingers and twirled the clock hands round when it didn't even matter. The blood was cold and drying, the outside world still bustling as if there wasn't a body lying just out of sight and a detective slumped on the wall, heart pounding and shoulders heaving and throat seizing up. 

It is what it is.

Too little too late.

He'd been dead for only a short period, not long enough for the body to wilt away but long enough for the limbs to be stiff, like a puppeteer had sculpted the perfect murder scene and left it hanging for someone to stumble across. There were no deductions made apart from the obvious, so obvious is was scrawled in blood above the matted grey hair on the wall. 

'FIRE IN THE HEART'

Where a heart should have been resting sat an ugly hole, singed flesh meeting singed clothes in a battle for domination. A fire in the heart, dancing and heating up whatever it captured, until eventually it reached its final end and took what it had burnt to the grave. Dead is when the spark in the eyes is extinguished, yet unlike fire is utterly without smoke. Sherlock was burnt, scarred with heat from the one man who managed to claw the heart he considered to be nonexistent out his chest and wrap his reaffirming hands around it. Hands that were bruised. Hands that were broken. Hands that were scarlet.

Sherlock felt the panic like a cluster of sparks in his abdomen, like a hurricane of knives in his throat, like an iron grip on his heart. His brain was processing the information quicker than he could bare to acknowledge it -John blood dead murder cold gone left me- and his body was refusing to respond to the frantic commands he was shouting at it. He was too late to save the only man - best friend blogger saved me gone blood- he'd ever pledged to protect above his own life, too late to stop the light from fading from his eyes and the twitching of his clawing fingers from slowing. If this is what it is he didn't want it, he would have jumped head first off that rooftop until the planet caved in and the stars faded out just to save him. John wasn't meant to die -soldier blood safe home dead war- yet Sherlock had ensured it the minute he'd met John on the doorstep of 221B, had the scriptures written and the stars aligned just from the shaking of his hand. 

It hurt more than words could ever possibly express, it was pain never felt by man before yet experienced a thousand times over. Emotional pain had a biological purpose, to educate us away from unhealthy patterns in order to lengthen the life or strengthen the soul. But it never had a purpose the first time around, everything was new and inexperienced and so real it tore through old wounds as if they were made of glass so thin it would break under a breath of wind. Emotional pain leaves invisible scars, but if they were really there Sherlocks body would be littered with them.

To see him dead was to die himself, there was no him without the man who made him who he was, there was no Sherlock Holmes without John Watson stood by his side. Dead is permanent. Dead is forever. Dead is not only for the dead but for the living, the ones who had to pick up the pieces and wake up every morning alive but not, breathing yet still struggling for breath. Sherlock couldn't breath, he could feel the hands round his throat but they were only his own, clawing at the exposed flesh to find some kind of release from everything surrounding him. 

"John, John wake up, please just wake up." 

He hadn't called anyone, not Lestrade or Mycroft or to the sky in a dramatic cry of sorrow. Instead he lay just as John did, eyes staring back into unseeing darkness beyond the blue grey lenses that stopped working just as everything else did. He didn't know how long he'd been there, he didn't know how his body hadn't already run out of liquid due to the steady stream of salt water leaking out his eyes, soaking his red cheeks with trails of memories. Each tear was a moment, each moment was brief, yet each brief moment would last a life time.

Running through the streets, playing cluedo on the floor, dancing behind closed curtains, eating dinner at angelos, whispering in the darkness, travelling around the city, spending seconds just staring at the other and feeling a complete sense of trust. No matter how hard he stared John didn't stare back now, never would again and never could again. Sherlock moved without his brains permission, joints resisting and bones grinding against each other in a harsh snapping sound, similar to what would've been heard beneath John's swollen skin. He gently reached forward and brushed down John's eyelids, sending him into an eternal tortured sleep. He didn't look like he was sleeping and he certainly wasn't, but Sherlock could only do what the hopelessly naive John would have wanted and that was to lay him to rest. 

A sob escaped his lips as he took in the blood in his best friends hair, the blood on his hands, the blood coating his clothes and skin and eyelids and mind and soul and life and he couldn't bare to be so close to the putrid smell that triggered the part of his heart that he longed to be rid of. He collapsed back against the wall, clenching his eyes shut and yanking his shaking hands through his hair. 

No no no no no no no.

It was an execution of the worst kind, a murder so foul even Sherlock would have backed away in disgust if he were just another face, just another twisted man trying to do a twisted world some right. Someone had done this, someone had bound his John and beaten him, tortured him, made him beg for some kind of release from the hell he was forced to live through for no reason other than who he was friends with. Someone had murdered him in cold blood, his hands stained red with the nature of the crime so mercilessly committed. Yet Sherlocks hand were just as red, he may as well have been holding the knife, for Moriarty wouldn't have blinked twice at the ex-army doctor had it not been for his warm hold on Sherlocks heart and Moriarty determination to burn it. 

He wanted to scream, wanted to rip his throat to shreds with the pain consuming him. His whole body shook with the force of his sobs, uncontrollably vibrating down his spine and sending further jolts of pain up his back. He couldn't live without John, he couldn't barely manage day the to day life when he moved out and now he was expected to be without him completely. He didn't deserve this. John didn't deserve this. Sherlock wasn't a good man, redeemed only by the warmth and constancy of John's friendship, but now he didn't even have that. Victor Trevor was dead, Mary was dead, and now John was dead too. 

There was nothing he could do to stop the emotions, to stop time and reverse it so far that they had never met. To go so far as to ensure John was never shot and sent home with scars that never really healed. Because not even the great Sherlock Holmes could change what had already been decided, no matter what the consequences. The body lying on the street would be carted off to St Barts where a tearful Molly Hooper would clean it up and uselessly put it back together again, then it would be placed in a coffin and buried underground where no one could hurt it again. But little did that body know that on the surface so many people would be hurting, most of all the detective who could never cope with emotional trauma like everyone else did. Victor Trevor was the first case, he completely forgot of his existence. Mary was the second, he almost got himself killed because of a dead woman's words. And know there was John, the climax of all despairs locked into an arena with Sherlock stranded on the other side, ready for the first blow to hit him square in the chest where the flame burnt brightest. 

Sherlock never really considered what John had done to get over his death, but now above all else he wished he could just ask the man one last question.

"How did you do it?"

"I didn't."

"What do you mean?"  Sherlock whimpered.

"You can't get over someone's death Sherlock, that's not how these things work. You just learn to live with it, start again and work your way back." 

"But I don't know how, how am I supposed to live without you?" 

"I'm still here, in your mind, I'll never really be gone as long as you make sure I stay." John replied, smiling sadly. 

Sherlock looked up to see John crouching before him, warmth radiating from the tan colour of his skin and the light blue of his shirt. The detective smiled slightly in return, reaching out to place a hand on John's shoulder, but there was nothing there to touch. 

Sherlock took in his raised hand, desperately trying to grip onto the air to feel some of the sense of familiarity he craved but could not find. He looked back up to see John out of sight, only his body lying in the exact same place against the wall. His hand dropped heavily beside him, weighed down with the burden of what he was doing. John had done it with Mary, created an illusion of her in his head that eventually wormed its way into his subconscious and became as real as everything else surrounding him. Sherlock wondered briefly in John had done the same for Sherlock, if everyday he woke up at Baker Street and walked into the living room to find him lying on the sofa as always. 

"I did you know." John whispered, sounding close to his ear. Sherlock looked to his left to find John sat beside him, his head resting back against the wall and his eyes taking in Sherlocks tear stained face.

"You aren't real, you can't possibly know that," Sherlock croaked, his voice hoarse and painfully tight. 

"We both know that's not true. You saw what I was like when you came back, I never flinched when I saw you in a room like a normal person would if they saw someone supposedly dead. It was as if I was used to seeing you there, it was as if you'd never left." John replied.

"Stop saying I, you aren't him, you aren't real you aren't him you aren't him." Sherlock said, his voice raising slightly and his vision going blurry. The not-John lent in closer so Sherlock could see him even through his tears.

"But I am him. Don't you see, I'm all of him you have left." 

"Why did you have to leave me." Sherlock whispered through his tears, forgetting for a moment he was talking to himself.

"It was fate Sherlock. Remember, you were always written to end up alone." He whispered, and suddenly the John next to him was covered in blood, a hole where his heart should be yet his face still twisted in a smile. Sherlock flinched away and clenched his eyes shut, knowing what he saw wasn't real but the wounds on John's real body were. That wasn't the John he knew, the one he loved, that was the damaged version who whispered words only Sherlocks brain could come up with.

When he opened his eyes again there was only one John in the alleyway, but Sherlock knew better than to believe the other one was gone. A small part of him wanted the not-John to stay, the rational part of his brain overwhelmed by the side of him yearning to hear his voice one last time. If an illusion of his best friend was the only way to do this, then so be it. 

Because there would be no more warm hugs and equally warm smiles from over a coffee mug, no more boastful deductions and pride when praise was sent his way, no more late night confessions or cases or laughs or adventures because the adventure was over. He would never be able to experience John Watson in any ways other than his memories, and with one life lost went another. Without John there was no Sherlock, just a broken man lying in an alley with the scarlet traces of a lost life.


End file.
